Here I include selections from my chapbook Erotica: Shared Separateness, still in progress, in which I explore the contradictions and paradoxes of sexual division, sexual politics, sexual mores, and sexual suffering, all consequences of evolution's production of a seed-bearer and an egg-bearer, the egg separate by necessity since it alone is large enough to contain and transmit the mitochondria to the next generation.
LAMENTATIONS
“Hold me,” she will say when you can’t get it up.You have to think about her, not yourself.Male reluctance acknowledges the cost:For what you want so much, you have to give upThe notion you decide—it’s rape otherwise—And she knows it, asking you to let herParticipate in the loss that makes you bothNo less animals but human animalsAble to imagine sex as somehow love,Or an act, at least, that might have been loveIf only because it was mutual,Not the mindless lust of a breeding rutBut the shared experience of separatenessWhich only your coming can overcomeAnd that for just a moment you soon lament.
“Hold me,” she will say when you can’t get it up.You have to think about her, not yourself.Male reluctance acknowledges the cost:For what you want so much, you have to give upThe notion you decide—it’s rape otherwise—And she knows it, asking you to let herParticipate in the loss that makes you bothNo less animals but human animalsAble to imagine sex as somehow love,Or an act, at least, that might have been loveIf only because it was mutual,Not the mindless lust of a breeding rutBut the shared experience of separatenessWhich only your coming can overcomeAnd that for just a moment you soon lament.
“Love has Pitched his Mansion …”
But love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement, For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent. William Butler Yeats
Five mass extinctions have visited earthEons apart (each a blink of the eyeIn geologic time), but we live as ifIt can’t happen to us, we’re somehow charmedAnd need fear no cataclysm—why should we?
Cultures old as time have rebuked such hubris,But we pay no attention to history,Much less to nature—and that is our doom:Nature is not made in our image and likeness;We from nature evolve, one of her animals.
Like all animals, we live of excrement,Eating, shitting, pissing, fucking, dying.Though we whitewash nature frenetically,Our every achievement spurls up from dirt,Including love bodies alone surrender.
Sex-Ed 1950s USA
You ever felt your imaginationSeized suddenly by something won’t let go?A claw of thoughts sinking right down to the quick?
Walking home from school one day with ‘Freckles’ (We called him that—orange as the setting sun)I was half-listening when he lowered his voice:
“Just my sister and me at home today.She’ll let us cornhole her all we want—We got an old mattress out on the back porch—
“Wanna come? She’ll let you in if I tell her to.”Hung by the image like a slab of meat,I said nothing, just acted like I was cool,
Since I had no earthly idea what to sayLost in a world I didn’t know existed,Though it’d always been right there, next door.
How could I have missed it? I knew about sex:I played with Hilda Lee when we were little—We both really liked to lick and pat and rub.
Then her family moved out of town.I lost interest (“latency,” some call it).I just read my books and daydreamed a lot.
With your sister, though? Man! I was so naive.‘Freckles’ just squinted at me, kind of weird-like,And then walked on ahead, by himself, pretty fast.
That day, eleven years old, I learned a word I’d never forget. One other lesson, too:Every game we play’s an innuendo,
And innocence in the end’s a hindranceTo the outcome everyone covets—It’s never the hole but the corn that counts.
You ever felt your imaginationSeized suddenly by something won’t let go?A claw of thoughts sinking right down to the quick?
Walking home from school one day with ‘Freckles’ (We called him that—orange as the setting sun)I was half-listening when he lowered his voice:
“Just my sister and me at home today.She’ll let us cornhole her all we want—We got an old mattress out on the back porch—
“Wanna come? She’ll let you in if I tell her to.”Hung by the image like a slab of meat,I said nothing, just acted like I was cool,
Since I had no earthly idea what to sayLost in a world I didn’t know existed,Though it’d always been right there, next door.
How could I have missed it? I knew about sex:I played with Hilda Lee when we were little—We both really liked to lick and pat and rub.
Then her family moved out of town.I lost interest (“latency,” some call it).I just read my books and daydreamed a lot.
With your sister, though? Man! I was so naive.‘Freckles’ just squinted at me, kind of weird-like,And then walked on ahead, by himself, pretty fast.
That day, eleven years old, I learned a word I’d never forget. One other lesson, too:Every game we play’s an innuendo,
And innocence in the end’s a hindranceTo the outcome everyone covets—It’s never the hole but the corn that counts.